An Easter ban on dancing? That’s ‘tyranny’

Young clubgoers in Berlin say they won’t sit still for it

BERLIN Observe Easter or go dancing?

In many parts of traditionbound Germany, religion is winning out. And for those who like to go club-hopping into the night, it’s not a happy holiday.

For a century, music and dancing all night long on religious holidays has been verboten. Here in the German capital, where the most popular clubs don’t get going until after midnight, many ignore such hidebound rules. “I don’t find it modern at all,” said Matthias Jeromin, 28, an engineering student in Berlin. “It contradicts my idea of a secular state.”

Germany has restricted dance celebrations on religious holidays since the Middle Ages, but the ban only became legal in 1919.

Since then, each of Germany’s 16 states decides when and how to enforce the ban, which prohibits all manner of raucous behavior in public on state-recognized religious holidays, such as Good Friday, which is the focus of the Easter holiday in this country.

In southern Germany’s Catho- lic-dominated Bavaria, a strict 70-hour dancing ban runs from 2 a.m. Thursday until midnight on Easter eve. In Berlin, there’s only a short dancing ban on Good Friday, from dawn till dusk.

In November, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court ruled that making citizens hang up their dancing shoes on religious holidays violates their constitutional right to assemble, but many German states have yet to revise their bans. Until then, tradition still rules.

And Germany’s influential Protestant and Catholic churches defend the ban as part of a social contract. “Germany is a secular society in the sense that church and state are separate, but they have a cooperative relationship with one another,” said Heike Krohn-Bräuer, a spokeswoman for the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Oberlausitz.

“There are people that don’t accept that,” she said. “But the societal consensus is that we have these quiet public holidays that society has to comply with.”

In Berlin — known as the country’s party as well as political capital — residents, nightclubs and police largely ignore the ban. One of city’s largest and hippest clubs, Matrix, which has nine bars and five dance floors, planned a massive party on Good Friday.

Yet in Potsdam, 22 miles southwest of Berlin, a dancing ban is in effect throughout Good Friday until 4 a.m. Saturday. Violating the ban carries a maximum fine of more than $1,000.

That isn’t deterring members of Spartacus, a left-wing collective in Potsdam. They’re protesting the ban by throwing two parties over the weekend — despite warnings from police .

“They threatened us with fines if we go through with it ... but we’re going to do it anyway,” said member Philipp Ziems.

Ziems said he has nothing against those who celebrate religious holidays, but “to dictate to people of other faiths or atheists what they can or cannot do on these days is absurd.”

Asked if the city will enforce the ban and shut down the party, Stefan Schulz, a city spokesman, said that if “we’re tipped off that the law is being breached, then we have to intervene.”

“The societal consensus is that we have these quiet public holidays that society has to comply with.” Heike Krohn-Bräuer, Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg- Silesian Oberlausitz